The mod said I should be less polemic in my OP’s. It has been very hard to do because I am of the opinion that so many people are just fucking crazy! Here is my effort to satisfy the MOD.
The earth will end in 2012, now, has been the only ongoing stipulated multi-generational deadline that I can think of. In other words all generations have had an obsession with the end time.
But it seems to me that the public has been obsessed by all kinds of other deadlines this political season more so than any time that I remember. Hell I remember a time that American people were just thankful that they lived through the day during the cold war and couldn’t care less about what was going to happen in 50 years. I actually perceive time goes faster when there exists time frames.
Examples
Road projects post the deadline for completion at construction zones. This was not the case in years past.
Conservation efforts give deadlines for goal accomplishment, ie removing animals from endangered species list.
Bush tax cuts to expire by 2010
Global warming mitigation deadlines of 2012, 2030, and 2048.
A lot of legislation from congress have deadline expiry dates.
World population to hit 7,000,000,000 by 2012
Peak oil deadlines have been cited since the early nineties.
Hannity counts down the deadline to the general election.
In my mind I have a countdown to the Obama inauguration when the America as I knew it, a land of the free, comes to an end.
Every disaster scenario has a deadline when the probability of it happening reaches the 95 percentile.
Can you think of anymore deadlines? I can’t find a web site which is a compendium of deadlines and there should be given the obsession. Or maybe the lack of a web site indicates that it is not an obsession? Note that fifteen each of USSR’s 5 year plans led to zilch, a breakup of the union!.
Why do the people in America today have such a penchant for deadlines. And is the penchant an obsession requiring therapy. In my opinion there seems to be a lot of fear by a lot of people that things can only get worse which is a pessimists view of the world and seems to justify the need for deadlines. Is it healthier to to be optimistic and live in the present to the fullest and not labor over the might be’s and could be’s of the future? Didn’t a poet say “The best laid plans of mice and men, often go awry” See To a Mouse - Wikipedia
Is Obama pessimism incarnate and is he playing the salvation card to the max? That is just so wrong and so un-Reagan like. Sorry I guess the thread is polemic after all.
You must never have worked on a newspaper or been involved with a software or hardware development project, or construction, or just about anything. Lots of things we do have inherent deadlines, like getting a budget approved, or a paper written if you are in school.
Half the deadlines you mention aren’t even deadlines. A countdown is to a date - counting down to the election or inauguration has nothing to do with deadlines. Deadlines are very specific also. Saying that if we don’t do something about global warming by 2012 or whatever doesn’t mean that if we’re 5 days late we’re screwed. It’s simply a case of tracking trends and extrapolating. Same with world population - just an extrapolation.
Expiration dates aren’t deadlines either. They’re simply a way of keeping the spending of money from being the default. If you still need the project, you reauthorize, but if you don’t the money goes away, which saves it.
The 2010 expiration date on the Bush Tax Cut was an underhanded way of making them seem cheaper. They thought they’d have a Republican Congress and extend them, so they always intended to have the revenue lower than forecast. Now we’ve got a Democratic Congress they’re squealing like a pig, caught in their lie.
The end of a football game is a deadline. Deadlines focus the mind most wonderfully. Ever cram for a test? When I was in grad school we had quarterly reports to do, and we did at least 50% of the work for the quarter in the five days before the report was due.
The way you refer to “the MOD” makes it sound like you’re referring to some sort of collective, like “the Borg”.
Waittaminnut…
[list=“1”]
[li] The Borg were first seen in an episode of ST:TNG[/li][li] There were 178 episodes of ST:TNG; 178 * 2 = 356[/li][li] If we count 356 items using a zero-based index, our limits are 0 and 355.[/li][li] The Borg cube “Wolf 359” was destroyed in the year 2367.[/li][li] 2367 - 355 = 2012![/li][/list]
History really does repeat itself!
Posting construction dates has always depended on locations, agencies, and funding agencies. Sometimes it will vary from project to project in the same agency. So posting construction dates is not something that wasn’t done previously, everywhere, but is being done now, everywhere.
For construction projects that will affect traffic, it’s nice to post the dates so that people can make detour plans. On the other hand, as soon as you do, something will happen to delay the project, and then you’ve got construction happening past the posted date, which looks bad. So different cities, counties, and agencies make different decisions about posting dates.
If holding the project to a construction time limit is important, that won’t be shown by posting dates. That will be shown in the special provisions of the construction contract, which will have a Liquidated Damages provision. Every public construction contract has a number of calendar or working days* included in it. Liquidated Damages is the amount that the Contractor will pay for every day that construction extends beyond the planned end date of the project. The more important finishing the project on time is, the higher the daily Liquidated Damages. It’s an incentive thing.
The sign is there for the public. The Liquidated Damages truly define the deadline.
*Working days do not include days lost to weather or certain unforseen delays. Change Orders can also include time extensions. You can see that this would be a point of discussion during construction.
I love the conceit that the Mayans knew the apocalypse would come in 2012. Grear predictive powers there, guys. I mean, you could figure out the world was going to end in another 500 years, but you didn’t know to look out for men in big wooden ships?
“Scum” is a abusive opinion. “Senile” is a medical diagnosis. Produce a cite from a doctor who examined Reagan who concluded that he suffered from Alzheimer’s during his terms of office.
Nothing focuses the mind like a deadline, IMHO. I always ask the lawyers who appear before me when they’ll be able to finish their research, file their motion, complete discovery, etc. If it’s a reasonable length of time, then I set a deadline. I then expect them to stick to it, unless they have a good (and probably unforeseeable) reason why they can’t. Otherwise cases drag out waaaaaaay too long and nothing ever gets done. Reasonable deadlines are an effective means of forcing the timely completion of tasks.